Related

T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") famously compared counterinsurgency warfare
to "eating soup with a knife." The same idea might apply to the efforts of
Western navies to protect commercial shipping from the marauding pirates of
Somalia, except for the fact that soup is typically contained within a bowl
 and the pirates have the freedom of a vast ocean in which to move. They
recently captured the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker carrying $100 million in crude oil, by
striking hundreds of miles away from the shipping lanes being patrolled by
some of the world's most powerful navies. But if the pirates have the wind
at their backs out at sea, they got some bad news back on shore last
weekend, when five armored vehicles loaded with fighters of the Islamist
Shabab militia arrived in the port town of Harardhere, where the pirates who
seized the Sirius Star are based.

The Islamic Courts Union, which controlled Mogadishu until it was
ousted in a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006, denounced the seizure of
the Saudi vessel as a "major crime," and its erstwhile affiliate, the more
militant Shabab movement, was even more forthright. "Saudi is a Muslim
country, and it is a very big crime to hold Muslim property," Sheik Abdulaahi
Osman, a commander of the group in Harardhere, told the Bloomberg news
service on Sunday. "I warned again and again, those who hold the ship must
free it unconditionally or armed conflict should be the solution. If they
don't free the ship, we will rescue it by force." (See pictures of Somalia's pirates.)

Some locals believed the Islamists had come to confront the pirates;
others speculated that the Shabab may simply be seeking a share in the
booty. The pirates didn't wait around to find out, reportedly hightailing
it out of town and onto the high seas to avoid an encounter with the Shabab.
While the presence of NATO and allied navies on the high seas has failed to
stamp out piracy, the emergence of an authority more powerful than the
buccaneers themselves in their onshore sanctuaries could clearly be a
game changer.

Piracy has thrived along the Somali coastline not because commercial
shipping is poorly defended but because Somalia is a failed state where
anarchy has prevailed for most of the past two decades. The transitional
government currently backed by the U.S. is a loose coalition of rival clan
warlords who are fighting among themselves and whose authority is tenuous.
Mogadishu and southern Somalia were a little more stable in 2006, during the brief
reign of the Islamic Courts Union, whose militia fighters drove out
the warlords and imposed a peace generally welcomed by the local population,
even if they chafed under the resultant Shari'a law. And the Islamists
cracked down on piracy in areas under their control, including Harardhere.

The Islamists, however, were giving shelter to a handful of al-Qaeda operatives wanted in connection with terrorist attacks in East Africa, so the
U.S. threw its weight behind the beleaguered transitional government and
helped direct an Ethiopian invasion aimed at dislodging the Islamists.
Although the invasion scattered the Islamists, the transitional government
remains deeply unpopular and unable to cement its control. The government's security is largely dependent on an Ethiopian occupation that is itself
growing weary of the cost of fighting the resurgent Islamists, led by the
radicalized Shabab movement. The government and its allies arguably control
only two Somali cities. It is now involved in U.N.-brokered power-sharing
talks with more moderate elements among the Islamists.

But the clock cannot be turned back to 2006, when the more cohesive
Islamist authority in Mogadishu had some success in stamping out piracy.
Some analysts suggest that the Shabab have themselves lately made use of
pirate groups to ferry weapons and train their fighters in naval combat, in
exchange for protection. There is no solid evidence to back this claim, however,
and other analysts insist that the Islamists remain the best bet for
policing piracy. (It is also alleged that some pirate groups are in league
with warlords who form part of the transitional government.) But both the
Islamists and the transitional government are riven by internal power
struggles, further complicating the task of forging a law-and-order
consensus necessary to combat the pirates. (See pictures of the brazen pirates of Somalia.)

Establishing order on shore, however, remains the key to stamping out
the problem, for the simple reason that keeping a dozen or more vessels from
the navies of the U.S. and its allies engaged in escort missions for all
commercial shipping in the area is too costly to sustain over the long term.
As long as the pirates remain unmolested on shore and flush with cash  Kenya last week suggested that the pirates have extorted as much as $150 million in ransom payments over the past year  they will find ways around the
protection offered by sophisticated warships.

By moving into Harardhere, the Islamists are signaling an intent to
reassert control over the coastline. They recently took control of the key
southern port city of Kismayo. That could help tamp down the incidence of
piracy  although only if the Shabab are committed to doing that rather
than seeking to profit from the lucrative industry. In that way, they can be
compared to the Taliban in Afghanistan, which stamped out opium production
when it was in power and seeking international recognition. Today, as it wages an insurgency, the Taliban sustains itself by taxing the poppy trade. The key players in Somalia are likely to police piracy only when the political and economic incentives for doing so outweigh the gains to be made from encouraging and taxing it.